Suspended in a Sunbeam: Introducing A Mote of Dust

In February 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe took its last ever photograph. Heading out of the Solar System on its one-way ticket to nowhere, it turned its cameras back towards whence it came, and took one last glimpse of a distant home.

Pale Blue Dot, as the photo subsequently became known, remains one of the most evocative images of our planet ever taken. A study in scale; Earth as pixel, a tiny smudge, hanging against the void. Or as astronomer Carl Sagan famously put it: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was. The aggregate of our joy and suffering… on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”

Words, image… they’re an oft-used metaphor – but not one whose potency has been diluted. “I think that Sagan’s quote is the ultimate perspective,” says Craig Beaton. “It’s a reminder to myself to stop focusing on myself. What’s beautiful about the quote is that it gives you that perspective; the more you back out from yourself, the more you can see.”

“I make anti-party music” – Craig B

A shade metaphysical for a discussion about music, perhaps, but Beaton has never been afraid to address thoughts that resonate far beyond a record’s physical dimensions. Ideas that stretch from his time as vocalist/guitarist with the criminally under-rated Aereogramme, more recently as one half of The Unwinding Hours, and now, in solo guise, as A Mote of Dust – and an eponymous album that represents quite possibly the most accomplished disc of his career so far.

It’s a pared-back affair, centred upon piano, steel-stringed guitar and vox, and it’s this intimate setting that allows the album’s themes to percolate. Meditations upon faith, dislocation, isolation, taking Sagan’s words and extrapolating out. It’s a personal record, unafraid to touch upon confessional. But it’s also an honest record, tinted with a self-deprecating playfulness, and far too canny to fall prey to ego.

“That’s always been the case for me,” he explains as The Skinny catches up with him at home in Sheffield. “If I don’t include a personal aspect in the song it never feels right; it feels that there’s something missing. I’ve always wanted to try not to write like that, but I just can’t seem to do it.”

“The music that I loved when I was growing up was music that made me think that somebody was somehow articulating emotions and feelings that I struggled to articulate myself. The idea that maybe somewhere, somebody might connect with the feelings – not so that they understand me; so that they understand themselves. That they get a sense that maybe it’s okay to feel that way; that maybe it’s okay to ask these questions.”

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“That to me was always the real power of music – that you can take a song and make it your own; if people enjoy music that I make, it’s really important that the song is theirs now. It’s actually nothing to do with me anymore.”

All of which suggests an artist unafraid to pose intelligent questions. “It is cathartic to me, and I would hope that it then becomes cathartic to other people; what it means to me, and to my life, is completely irrelevant. What matters is what it means to them, and I really hope that that’s the case. Of course, some people are going to listen to this and go, ‘BORING,’ but it’s not going to be for them. For some people I really hope that it is actually something that maybe gets their thinking caps on.”

Life after The Unwinding Hours

It’s been three years since Afterlives, the last Unwinding Hours long player, and Beaton has since maintained a degree of radio silence. Even in 2010, as the band’s self-titled debut was released, he’d already returned to university – he’s currently studying for a Masters in Sociology and Religious Studies – and having upped sticks from Glasgow to Yorkshire, such life changes are very much in A Mote of Dust’s sphere of influence.

“It’s connected to moving down to Sheffield,” he explains of the record’s genesis. “I was moving away from the network of musicians that I knew, going into a much more isolated environment, because when you move to a new city when you’re in your 30s, nobody wants new friends; it’s strange for people in their late 30s to start looking for people to hang about with.”

Not that A Mote of Dust exists in a vacuum. Produced by Chem19’s Paul Savage (“Paul has always been fantastic; I think he gets a lot of enjoyment out of pushing people, but he does it really cleverly – he’s not a tyrant about it”), and featuring frequent collaborator Graeme Smillie on piano (“He understands what I’m looking for. You need somebody like Smillie to come in and make a track human; to embellish it with all the right moments”), the exposed, stripped-back texture of the material – while different in tone to previous work – still slots neatly into canon.  

“With Aereogramme we used to sell acoustic CDs on tour,” he recalls. “We would record acoustic EPs in hotel rooms, and sold about four or five acoustic CDs, and we continued to do this with The Unwinding Hours. Even though these bands were always known as post-rock, I always had the singer-songwriter element going on; it was always a very important part of what I like to do. I knew that the acoustic thing was going to be the most appropriate outlet for what was going to be next.”

Of course, one name missing from the credits is that of long-time writing partner Iain Cook, who as one third of Chvrches is reaping a critical and commercial success that Aereogramme and The Unwinding Hours were denied; by a strange quirk of fate, A Mote of Dust was released just a week after Chvrches’ latest Every Open Eye.

Not that Craig is casting envious glances; “I was competing with Chvrches and I hope that I completely blew them out of the water,” he laughs. “No; they deserve absolutely every success. I have an incredible amount of respect, not just for Iain, but for [former Aereogramme producer] Martin Doherty as well. They’re genuine care nerds; absolutely obsessive about sound, and having Lauren Mayberry’s songwriting skills, and that voice – I never get bored of listening to her singing.”

Does it feel strange to be working without Iain? “I’ve worked with him since I was about eighteen, so yeah – it was strange. However, it was also really lovely to be able to do something different, having the chance to work with Paul Savage, which I’ve wanted to do for many, many years. What then developed was that we attempted to record in a completely different way. With Iain, I’d record the guitar and the vocals separately. When we came to work with Paul he suggested that we tried to do it live. We did about 80% of the album live, me playing guitar and Graham playing the piano at the same time, and the end result was something a little bit different.”

“I think I make anti-party music,” he adds, laughing again. “I was watching a festival on TV, and there were thousands of people going crazy to this 4/4 beat, and I was thinking ‘that’s exactly what I don’t do.’ I don’t write in 4/4, and I don’t write these big, anthemic tunes – it’s not what I do, and it’s not really what I want to do.”

And despite all the questions that A Mote of Dust floats, you get the sense that Craig B is comfortable with how things have turned out. “Having the realisation that I’m only ever going to appeal to a certain audience, and having the music not be the sole thing that I do but just one of the things that I do, has actually allowed me to continue making music. It gives me a creative outlet that’s vital to my wellbeing. However, I need to do the studying, which I absolutely adore as well – it keeps me intellectually stimulated.”

“How I’m going to balance that in the future I’m not entirely sure, but the studying and the music has been a lovely combination of things; it’s unbelievably chaotic at times, and I’ll go a bit quiet until I come back out on tour, then I’ll probably go quiet again. But that’s how it is – I think that’s a good way to be.”